Musical Instruments I INTRODUCTION World Music Tour Click on the instruments to hear music from around the world. © Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Musical Instruments, tools used to expand the limited scope of musical sounds—such as clapping, stamping, whistling, humming, and singing—that can be produced by a person's unaided body. Throughout the world, instruments vary greatly in purpose and design, from natural, uncrafted objects to complicated products of industrial technology. Although sirens, automobile parts, and radios have been employed in avant-garde compositions, this article mainly concerns those specialized implements intended for performing the world's conventional folk, popular, and classical musics. II THE PRODUCTION OF SOUND Sound arises from vibration transmitted by waves to the ear. Incoherent, violent vibration is normally interpreted as noise, whereas regular, moderate motion produces tones that can be pleasing. The faster the vibration, the higher the pitch that is perceived. Some pipe organs encompass the full audible range of pitch, approximately 16 Hz (hertz, or cycles per second) to 20,000 Hz, or more than ten octaves, but most instruments have a much more limited compass; indeed, many play only a single note or have no identifiable pitch at all. The greater the amplitude or power of audio waves, the louder their sound, which in some electronically amplified music can reach a painful, ear-damaging intensity. The timbre, or tone color, of the sound is influenced by the presence and relative strength of overtones, or harmonics, in the sound wave. The perception of timbre, however, is also affected by the duration and location of the sound, and by its envelope, or its characteristics of attack (onset) and decay (which may, for example, be abrupt or gradual, or—especially in attack—may involve transient harmonics). The sounds of musical instruments are caused and modified by three components: (1) the essential vibrating substance (such as a violin string), set into motion by bowing, blowing, striking, or some other method; (2) the connected reflector, amplifier, or resonator (soundboard, tube, box, or vessel); and (3) associated sound-altering devices, among them keys, valves, frets, and mutes. III SYSTEMS OF CLASSIFICATION Instruments can be classified in different ways—for example, by their primary materials (metal, wood, earthenware, skin, and so forth, an arrangement followed in East Asia); their social status and appropriate setting (church, military, parlor); or their musical role (rhythmic, melodic, chordal, drone). Since the 2nd century BC, Western audiences have conventionally distinguished among winds, strings, and percussion. This exclusive division, however, does not accommodate instruments such as the piano, which employs both strings and a percussion mechanism; or the aeolian harp, a zither the strings of which are vibrated by the wind. Nor is the familiar distinction of brasses from woodwinds quite logical: Saxophones and orchestral flutes are metal woodwinds, whereas early “brasses” were often made of animal horn (the shofar), wood (the serpent, a bass instrument), or even ivory (the cornetto, a small Renaissance horn). A comprehensive classification based on acoustical principles was devised in the 19th century. Instrument families are defined in terms of what vibrates to produce the sound. These families are the idiophones—solid, intrinsically sonorous objects; membranophones—taut membranes; aerophones—enclosed or free masses of air; and chordophones—stretched strings. A fifth family, electrophones—oscillating electronic circuits—originated recently. IV IDIOPHONES Cymbals Cymbals are percussion instruments and members of the family of musical instruments known as idiophones. They are made of bronze and are played by being struck together or by striking a single cymbal with a stick or wire brush. Ancient cymbals from Assyria date from 800 bc. These cymbals are made by Zildjian in Armenia. Dorling Kindersley The largest, most varied and widespread, and probably the oldest instrument family consists of idiophones. Known at least since the Stone Age, idiophones range in complexity from hollowed logs (slit-drums) of indefinite or tuned pitch that are used rhythmically, often to send signals, to precisely tuned cast-bronze bells that, combined in a carillon, form the most massive and expensive of instruments. Bells vibrate at their rim, whereas gongs—perhaps invented in Southeast Asia by Bronze Age metalsmiths—vibrate at their center. The so-called steel drum or piano pan is a modern Trinidadian gong that produces more than one pitch from its segmented surface. See Bell; Gong. Traditional Timbila of Mozambique Among the Chopi, who have lived for centuries along the coast of Mozambique, there is a highly developed tradition of songwriting and composing for timbila (xylophone) orchestras. Elaborate migodo (dance suites), interspersed with poetic songs pertaining to village life, are often performed to these compositions. Timbila music is now recognized as the national music of Mozambique. "Eduardo Durao Mauaia" from Eduardo Durao and Orquestra Durao: Timbila (Cat.# Globestyle CDORBD 065) (p)1991 Globestyle ACE Records, Ltd. All Rights Reserved./Roger Armstrong/ACE Records These examples are known as percussion idiophones because they are all struck with beaters. Such instruments are often played in sets. The xylophone is a set of tuned hardwood bars. In Indonesian music, the saron is a metallophone, made up of bronze bars; the bonang, a set of small tuned gongs. The celesta is a metallophone with a pianolike keyboard. A piano hammer action also strikes the glass bars of the glasschord, a 19th-century English crystallophone. The oldest existing sets of tuned- bar idiophones, excavated in East Asia, are lithophones, made of stone; lithophones were also made in 19th-century England. Traditional Gamelan of Bali The Island of Bali has a long and rich tradition of gamelan music. The gamelan is a large ensemble, consisting of up to 40 musicians playing varying sizes of gongs, xylophones, and drums. It performs for traditional occasions and ceremonies. This recording of Tabuh Pisan is performed by the Gamelan Orchestra of Batur Temple. "Tabuh Pisan" from Bali: Music for the Gong Gede (Cat.# Ocora C 559002) (p)1987 Ocora/Radio France. All rights reserved./George Holton/Photo Researchers, Inc. Concussion idiophones are struck together, usually in pairs. Turkish-style brass cymbals and Spanish wooden castanets (see Cymbals; Castanets) are the most familiar types, but ivory and bone clappers were common in ancient Egypt. Egyptian worshipers also used the sistrum, a rattle with metal rings fitted loosely on rods. Rattles are normally shaken rather than struck. They include vessel types, with loose rattling objects enclosed in a container; strung rattles, with small, hard objects tied together or to a handle; and frame rattles, such as the sistrum and the Javanese angklung (tuned bamboo tubes sliding within a framework). The jingle, or pellet, bell is a metal vessel rattle, not a true bell. Thumb Piano This sansa, a type of thumb piano from South America, is related to the mbira of Africa. It is played by plucking the metal tongues with the thumbs or forefingers. The different lengths of the tongues produce different notes. Many mbiras are elaborately carved, and some are placed inside a hollowed-out gourd to create greater resonance. Dorling Kindersley Other idiophones may be scraped, as is the washboard played in old-time jug bands; or they can be rubbed with a bow (as in a nail violin) or with the fingers. Moistened fingers rub the rims of musical glasses, tuned by partial filling with water (See also Harmonica: Glass Harmonica). Plucked idiophones include the rotating ratchet used as a holiday noisemaker; the African mbira or thumb piano, the many metal or cane tongues which can be individually tuned; and the music box, with its “comb” of flexible steel teeth that are plucked by pins which are on a rotating cylinder. V MEMBRANOPHONES Tabor The tabor was a popular medieval European drum. It was used as an accompaniment to dancing and also as an instrument in military bands. The tabor was supported by a strap worn over the shoulder. The drummer then beat the drum with a stick held in one hand and played a pipe with the other hand. The tabor is still used occasionally as a folk instrument. Dorling Kindersley All true drums belong to the membranophones. A drum has one or two heads of skin or plastic stretched over a resonator or over a narrow frame. Kettledrums, having a single head over a bowl-shaped resonator, are produced in all sizes. Orchestral kettledrums are tuned by means of hand screws or pedals, whereas some non- Western types are tuned with paste or heat applied to the head, or by manipulating the lacing which attaches to the head or heads. Hard and soft beaters offer tonal variety. In India the technique of playing small kettledrums (the baya in the pair called tabla) with the hands is a subtle art. Cylindrical drums, usually unpitched, vary in size from huge basses drawn on wagons in parades, to shallow, waist-slung drums equipped with snares that intensify the sound. In parts of Africa and the Pacific Islands sacred drums are taboo to the uninitiated; their wood bodies are elaborately carved and decorated, and revered drums occupy huts to which votive offerings are brought. Slender, elongated drums with reptile-skin heads glued on with human blood accompany male ritual dances in New Guinea. Some Native Americans accompany tribal dances and chants on broad, shallow drums beaten by several players at once. A light hand-held frame drum is played by Eskimo shamans; it resembles Asian shamans' drums. The tambourine is a frame drum that usually has rattles attached to the frame; it is both struck and shaken and is sometimes rubbed. The rommelpot is a Flemish friction drum played as a toy; rubbing a stick or string protruding through its head causes the head to vibrate.